Please see the project pages linked above and associated publications for further details of this research. See also my additional work page for details of public engagement, impact, and smaller projects and grants.

PV Interfaces

PV interfaces: self-powered interfaces and interactions via
photovoltaic surfaces is a project in collaboration with
colleagues in DST Innovations, Hewlett Packard, Google, HAB Housing
and IIT Bombay to develop approaches to capture the benefits of the
IoT future while making it sustainable, delightful and universally
accessible. The work involves a team of material scientists and
human computer interaction researchers, working together with partners
to develop a new form of physical material that can generate the power
it needs to drive digital interfaces and interactions. That is, we will
drive towards attractive, flat and flexible solar energy harvesting tiles,
which may incorporate input and output features to enable people to
interact with them and other connected devices. These tiles will be
able to be integrated into buildings (in walls and floors, for instance)
and objects (like tables, clothes and book covers). The surfaces capture
the energy from indoor and ambient light and at the same surface can
present digital displays and interfaces to the user. For more information,
publications and contacts, see the project website.

Breaking the glass

Breaking the glass: multimodal, malleable interactive mobile surfaces
for hands-in interactions is a project in collaboration with
colleagues in the University of Sussex, Université Grenoble Alpes, University of Bristol
and BBC R&D that looks to pioneer hands-in and hands-on interaction
on deformable mobile display surfaces, leading to dramatic new ways for
users to interact with content and services. We will ambitiously drive
developments in both physical display materials and interaction techniques,
enabling a richer, expressive toolkit of gestures and manipulation on touch
surfaces. For more information, publications and contacts, see the project website.

Reshaping the expected future

Re-shaping the expected future: novel interactions for emergent users is a project in collaboration with
colleagues in iHub Research, IBM Research India, Microsoft Research UK,
Microsoft Research India, University of Cape Town, MercyCorps, IIT Bombay
and Social Impact Lab. Emergent users are the hundreds of millions of people
from the poorest regions of the world. Challenges in these areas range from
low technological and textual literacy, a paucity of relevant, appropriate
content, to a lack of affordable, high-bandwidth data connections.
Our aim is to radically innovate for key information
interaction needs, drawing on a network of organisations and individuals
deeply connected to emergent users, along with emergent end-users themselves.
Our aspiration is to uncover fundamental, generally applicable interaction and
transaction techniques for these sorts of users. In the developed world
there are key base interfaces and interactions, such as textually-rich
query-result search, drag and drop, document cutting and pasting, and
persistent network-dependent content. A driving question in our work is,
“what are the equivalents of these sorts of enabling interfaces for
emergent users?” For more information,
publications and contacts, see the project website.

Scaling the rural enterprise

Scaling the rural enterprise is a project in collaboration with
colleagues in the University of Nottingham, Imperial College London,
Centre for Technology & Development, IBM Research Delhi, Microsoft
Research Bangalore and University of Cape Town to develop approaches to
“scaling up” rural enterprise by combining engineering, economics, interaction
design and computing. The problem we are addressing is a complex, socio-technical
one requiring a strongly inter-disciplinary user led approach. We work iteratively
with real-world communities in India and the UK. As well as hosting interventions,
these "living labs" help us understand how diverse networks of actors shape
rural enterprises in both the UK and India, and stretch our thinking to
ensure we guard against too specific a set of solutions. We focus on two
particular distributed communities of practice that produce goods through
shared labour which allows us to transfer lessons learned between India
and the UK and vice versa. For more information,
publications and contacts, see the project website.

The Next Billion

Community-generated media for the next billion is a project in collaboration with
colleagues in the University of Glasgow, University of Surrey, University of
Cape Town and Transcape NPO to provide innovative, appropriate media sharing
technologies and methods to give a voice to the hundreds of millions of users
on the wrong side of the so-called “digital divide”. The work will develop
solutions for the hard problems of designing effective interfaces and
information access algorithms for users with low levels of textual and
computer literacy; limited access to digital services; and patterns of
living and working that differ to those of people in “developed” regions.

Our role in Swansea is to design and build mobile media sharing tools and
interfaces as part of the project’s community media toolkit. For more information,
publications and contacts, see the project website.

Individual project pages

Negotiated Interaction

Multimodal, negotiated interaction in mobile scenarios is a project in collaboration with
colleagues in the University of Glasgow to think about the future of mobile digital-physical
world interactions. Our proposal is to investigate alternative ways to
allow users to interact with content and services in their environment,
such that the actions they make and feedback they receive are continuous,
with the user and system negotiating their interactions in a fluid, dynamic way.

Our role in Swansea is to examine mobile scenarios for negotiated interaction,
developing effective physical-digital interaction methods and toolkits. For more
information, publications and contacts, see the project website.